The Vermont House has given final approval to its version of a recreational marijuana legalization bill.

The measure passed by a vote of 75 to 71, following hours of debate.

The bill would make it legal for adults age 21 and older to possess up to one ounce of marijuana and grow two mature plants at home.

The limited measure does not create any new regulatory system for legally selling and taxing pot, nor does it fund new public safety or youth education efforts. 

Critics, including Rep. George Till -- a Jericho Democrat and a physician -- said that spells trouble.

France’s national motto, dating back to the French Revolution, is “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.” How the two finalists for the French presidency embody those principles depends on how you define them.

Liberty can mean freedom from tyranny, but tyranny can take many forms: an overreaching government, poverty, or, in a sense, addiction to harmful and illegal drugs. Equality can mean everyone is treated the same under the law, or that potentially harmful vices are punished equally. Fraternity can mean solidarity among people with common interests, or it can mean people helping each other in ways such as helping drug addicts find drug rehabs instead of putting them in prison.

The Canadian cannabis industry continues to be one of the hottest places to invest as the country prepares to become the first G-7 nation to legalize recreational cannabis.

The government’s stance on cannabis is one of the primary reasons behind our bullish view on this sub-sector of the cannabis industry. This political environment has led to an increase in the amount of money focused on the industry, the number of companies trying to capitalize on it, and the number of company developments.

This has been a busy week for Canadian cannabis stocks and we want to highlight seven important company developments.

Canopy Make Another Acquisition

The committee working on alterations to the marijuana law could choose to separate its recommendations into two separate bills, addressing some issues in legislation expected by the end of June and delaying decisions on less time-sensitive topics until later in the session, Senate President Stanley Rosenberg said Wednesday.

“I know that the two chairs and the members of the committee have been discussing what’s the short list that we need to deal with in the short-run and what is the longer list of things that we could do over time,” Rosenberg said. “Because we’ve got to get the agencies up and running and certain things can wait and certain things can’t.”

​The three state agencies that will oversee California’s medical cannabis industry released their proposed rules for the state system late last week. There are a lot of them. Rules, that is. It took us a while to comb through them all, but we managed. The result: Below you will find the single most insightful, comprehensive, legalese-free insider’s guide to California’s proposed regs.

Canada’s likely move to completely legalize marijuana next year promises to produce immediate spillover effects in the United States, starting with increased confusion at the U.S.-Canadian border.

“I’m expecting my business to boom,” said Len Saunders, an immigration attorney from Blaine, Washington.

With recreational marijuana already legal up and down the West Coast, from Alaska to California, he said, more Canadians may let down their guard and admit to U.S. authorities that they’ve used marijuana, reason enough to get foreigners barred from entering the country.

Uruguay has begun collecting names of people who wish to buy cannabis for recreational use, as the it prepares to become the first country on Earth to sell state-grown dope through a network of drugstores. 

Uruguayan citizens, or permanent residents in the country, wishing to avail of the service began signing up to the state’s weed register on Tuesday. This is the final step in a three-stage process which has already seen pot for recreational use became legal.  

The country adopted a law in December 2013 which provided three avenues for smokers wishing to consume cannabis without the risk of running into trouble with the law.

Decades of debt are pushing Jamaica to cash in on its most famous exports, but small farmers fear losing out in the rush to market medicinal marijuana.

When Bob Marley and the Wailers first performed Get Up, Stand Up to a restive 1970s Jamaica, never could they have guessed that the government would be cashing in on their lyrics, their Rastafarianism and even their spliffs 40 years later.

A proposal to reduce penalties for first-time marijuana possession has been deferred for two weeks by the Wichita City Council as the city explores whether it can be made more lenient for violators than originally suggested.

The proposed ordinance would fulfill part of what city voters tried to do through the initiative process two years ago when they voted to cut the penalty for pot possession to $50.

The state Supreme Court overturned that initiative on a technicality related to the signature-gathering process that put it on the ballot. Proponents are now collecting signatures to try to put it on the ballot again, but have said they will drop that effort if the council adopts a suitable ordinance relaxing penalties.

Observers point out that new state rules proposed for medical marijuana sales would govern just about every aspect of retailing, including possibly tracking weed patients' purchases.

The rules would require that "patient identification numbers" be entered into a state "track and trace" database and state that: "Upon request from the bureau, a licensed dispensary shall provide the name of the medical cannabis patient associated with the patient identification number listed on the delivery request receipt."